Tagged: CCPA

The Canadian Parliament reintroduced proposed legislation late last month that will dramatically impact how foreign copyright and trademark owners can protect their rights in Canada, and ultimately around the world. Reported to be enacted by the end of this year, the Combatting Counterfeit Products Act (Bill C-56; CCPA) proposes specific amendments to Canada’s Copyright Act and the Trade-marks Act that will allow foreign rights owners to better control the cross-border flow of counterfeit goods in Canada. The CCPA provides several notable reforms, including the expansion of registerable trademarks and new claims of recovery for trademark counterfeit goods. However, I believe its most important proposed reform is the establishment of a system allowing rights owners to register their copyrighted works and trademarks with Canadian authorities—while gaining help in detaining counterfeit shipments entering and leaving Canada.

The CCPA’s proposed request and detention system is an expansion of legal protections against counterfeit goods under current Canadian law because it introduces non-judicial measures rights owners can use to prevent the import and export of counterfeit goods in Canada. Currently, rights owners must obtain a Canadian court order to halt infringing imports and exports of counterfeit goods in and out of Canada. The CCPA addresses these limitations by allowing copyright and trademark owners to file a request for assistance with the Ministry of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness (Ministry). This allows Canada’s border authority, the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA), to monitor inbound and outbound shipments of counterfeit products for a two-year period, and temporarily detain counterfeit good shipments to allow further investigation.

Although rights owners will be required to provide a security deposit and fees for a detention, the request and detention system will provide a more expedient, inexpensive and overall more effective means for foreign rights owners to prevent the dissemination of counterfeit products, both in Canada and beyond. Filing a request for assistance with the Ministry is a faster and relatively less expensive procedure that seeking a court order. It also allows the CBSA to assist in policing shipments, complementing any monitoring activities conducted by foreign rights owners, and ultimately improving a foreign right owner’s overall global IP enforcement efforts.

Despite these benefits, the proposed request and detention system also has limitations:

Goods for Personal Use: The CCPA’s system does not cover counterfeit goods for personal use, such as those in personal baggage.

Parallel Importation: The system excludes copyright grey goods, namely copies of copyright-protected works made in a country outside of Canada where the copies were authorized to be made.

Transshipment: The CCPA’s system does not apply to transshipments. This means that foreign rights owners’ requests to the Ministry will not assist in detaining shipments of counterfeit goods that are only intermediately transiting Canada.

National Treatment: A foreign rights owner’s access to the request and detention system may also be limited depending on the type of IP they wish to enforce. A foreign copyright rights owner can likely access the system regardless if they are Canadian or if their work was created in Canada due to the legal protections provided in the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (Berne Convention). The Berne Convention allows a work from a Berne Convention country (Berne Convention countries) to qualify for protection in another Berne Convention country when it becomes attached. Attachment requires that the author of the work be a national of a Berne Convention country, the author is a habitual resident of a Berne Convention country, that the work is first published in a Berne Convention country, or that the work is published in a Berne Convention country within 30 days after an initial publishing in a non-Berne Convention country.

If a work is attached through any of these means, it is treated as if the work originated in each Berne Convention country, and is then subject to each Berne Convention country’s copyright protection requirements in order to qualify for copyright protection in that specific country. This means that if a foreign work becomes attached, and qualifies for protection under Canada’s Copyright Act, a copyright rights owner will have copyright protection for their work in Canada and may utilize the CCPA’s request and detention procedures once the CCPA is enacted.

Trademark rights owners will not be as easily able to utilize the CCPA’s system. Unlike copyrights, trademarks are generally territorial, meaning that a trademark or service mark registration only grants its owner rights in the mark in the territory of the registering country. This means that a trademark owner must generally have registered their mark in Canada in order for them to utilize the CCPA’s trademark request and detention system. Further, as Canada is not a member to the Protocol Relating to the Madrid Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Marks (aka the Madrid Protocol), foreign trademark owners need to obtain a Canadian trademark attorney to register their marks in Canada.

What’s The Takeaway?: The CCPA will give foreign copyright and trademark owners more effective and less expensive tools to protect their copyrighted works and trademarks in Canada and beyond. Its request and detention system does this by not only restricting imports of counterfeit goods, but also limiting their dissemination from Canada to other countries. Yet, the CCPA underscores the vigilance that foreign rights owners must have to ensure that they register and re-register requests for assistance for their works and marks. Only copyright and trademark owners (not authorized parties, e.g. licensees) can file requests with the Ministry to utilize the system’s full protections.

Further, the CCPA shows that foreign trademark owners who are serious about protecting their brands in Canada, and ultimately throughout the world, need to consider registering their marks in Canada in order to effectively utilize the CCPA’s request and detention system once it is enacted. Upon doing so, such owners can better insure protection for their marks in Canada and beyond.